25 Sublime Sites to Download Free Stock Images in 2017

As a designer, it’s no doubt that you require free stock images on a regular basis. Whether you’re a graphic designer, a web designer or a user interface designer, photography is a mighty tool for capturing depth and emotion. And let’s not forget about big headers and hero images, which are oh-so-trendy!

We originally wrote this article way back in 2009, but since design trends have evolved, stock photography has gotten much less-cheesy, and the needs of designers have changed, we thought it’d be a smashing idea to update this article with some of the newer options that are available today.

Let’s take a look at our top 10 best free image sites in 2017 – and 15 more worth a look.

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With a focus on nature, Magdeleine tends to curate images that are dark but soft. Expect a lot of unsaturated tones and an underlying ambiance of loneliness. You can switch between a light and dark background, and also narrow down your search to show free CC0 images only (no attribution required whatsoever).

SplitShare might be the complete opposite of Magdeleine. Every image is bright, uplifting, colourful, and includes a variety of fully-edited stock images that you’d consider trendy today (MacBooks, double-exposure, etc). You’re really going to want to take a look at their Top Photos section!

New Old Stock is about black and white, vintage, sepia, and generally old or old-looking stock images — they’re curated from Flickr, so double-check the license before use to make sure they are in fact free to use!

Skitterphoto has quite a large database of free stock images, so there’s no specific style or theme here, but I did notice that it’s a useful website for finding closeup shots of things. Many of the images have been edited in Photoshop already, so they look quite snazzy.

You’ve obviously heard of Unsplash, right? It’s pretty huge, with plenty of free stock images being added every day. They even have an API — if you’re a user of InVision’s Craft Plugin for Sketch or Photoshop, you might already know that you can insert images from Unsplash directly into your designs!

Real Light is terrific for finding singular objects or posed shots worthy of an e-commerce site. Imagine your old-school stock photography website, but with a little less cheese!

Tip: many of the of the resources listed here can be found on Zoommy App, a desktop app that collects CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) and Public Domain images from over 50 sources! It’s really come in handy for me this last year!

A Pinterest-style layout of free stock images with no specific theme, Boss Fight is useful for scanning through multiple photos at once (if you don’t quite know what you’re looking for). It should be noted that Boss Fight isn’t being updated anymore.

What I like about Freestocks is that there’s often multiple variations of a single stock image, for those situations when you find a suitable photo, but wish it was taken from a slightly different angle!

Very important note: please remember to check image licenses before use, as many websites and photographers provide photos for personal and/or commercial use on the basis that you provide credit to the owners of the images. Every website and possibly every photographer on each website will usually have different requirements, so it’s important to respect them.

Which of these free image sites stood out for you? Are there any here that you’ve been using for a while, and/or can personally recommend? Are there any that we’ve missed? Let us know, as we’ll be looking to update this article again in the future!

Daniel Schwarz is the founder of Airwalk Studios and editor of design at SitePoint, as well as a content creator, 4x author, designer, coder and digital nomad. Also interested in food, travel and remote working!